FACE LIFT

Oh honey.  Who did your work?  Veneer is like the furniture 80's version of a bad botched botox job, am I right or am I right?  I mean I think I'm pretty spot on.  By a raise of hands who actually sees veneer and is like "Oh baby I wanna get witcha and take yo pictcha"?  Nobody that's who.  So when me and the hubs were on the hunt and spotted this furniture version of Joan Rivers, we decided to open our hearts and our tool box and give this bad boy a facelift.  First we popped, peeled and scraped that veneer right off.  The tricky part was the leftover glue on the wood.  That was a pain.  We actually couldn't get it all off no matter how much we sanded and no matter how low the grit on the paper was.  But we filed it down so it was pretty smooth.  Next we sanded it.  The top of the dresser was GORGEOUS, once we started sanding the old nasty paint off.

              THE STRUGGLE IS REAL

Okay I just found out, as I was blogging that this MARVELOUS piece of furniture was custom built and the glass piece on top was filled with the lady's grandbabies pictures.  How do I know this?  My dear friend saw this on facebook and messaged me asking where I bought this piece from.  When I told her she proceeded to tell me all about this piece and how it was specially built for her grandma in Hickory, NC in 1968.  So then of course I felt terrible about calling it Joan Rivers, but she said that I could so I kept it in the opening line.  It was a good lesson though.  If you're going to make fun of furniture on social media make sure it's not your friend's grandma's specialty piece.  A lesson I doubt I'll ever have to face again, but I digress.  LOOK again at that wood.  It is so beautiful I can't even stand it.  It's like a zebra.

We used mixwax dark walnut (surprise) it is my favorite and looks good on every single piece. Then covered it with polyurethane and brought out such a beautiful warmth to the top.  I mean just look at that.  Is it not unreal?  The color is a Sherwin Williams sample color and I thought it was emerald green, but when we got home it looked more like Kelly green or a lily pad color, but I still really liked it. I thought about drilling holes and putting gold knobs on the drawers but I decided to leave it as is.

I sure hope it finds a great home after all the hard work that went into this statement piece, but also because knowing the history of it makes it that much more special.

Aging with beauty

This BROYHILL thrift store table, was OVER the HILL.  Probably late 80's early 90's and boring.  Nicely built but blah.  Solid wood but same old same.  Meaning pretty much every single middle class person has had this in their home, their best friends home or their grandmas home... Why?  Because they were beautifully made and solid wood.  There wasn't and isn't anything wrong with this table, other than what I just stated.  

  They're everywhere.  I, myself have redone quite a few of these Broyhill bad boys.  Decorating has come a long way in the sense that it's much more unique than it used to be.  Our parents generation and beyond worked really hard and put their hard earned money into things that were meant to last, like homes, furniture and their children.  Those tables, like those houses were well built and solid, but they were also ALL THE SAME!  So new generations that admire and are humbled by past generations ideals and work ethic pay homage by not chucking that stuff but reimagining it.  We shouldn't keep it just to keep it if it's not "speaking to your style or personality" just to please parents.  If they want us to have it then they should let us also LOVE it.  Here is how I LOVE IT!

After sanding and sanding and then sanding we stained the table top and leaf with minwax dark walnut.  Iooked GAWGEOUS.  We sanded and sanded and sanded the 6 chairs until our hearts content.  Then i got to painting.  And I must say I painted, and painted and painted.  Much more than normal.  I think that because we sanded so much the wood was extremely thirsty and just kept soaking up all of the paint.  So after many many coats and strokes of paint we were happy, then onto reupholstering those beautiful formal chairs. Again they're beautiful, but so formal that most homes can't quite cosmetically accommodate the look and quality of our homes' decorations nowadays. After all the sanding, staining, painting, reupholstering we still had the AGING WITH BEAUTY part to do, which means a little bit more sanding and then finally the makeup... ie: the waxing.  An important part of any beauty regimen is WAXING. I began to wax, and wax and wax. This table was a labor of labor.  Seriously it was hard work but it paid off because it went to a beautiful family of 5 that I just know will enjoy it and let it live on for years to come!